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Mount St. Helens
| Title |
Mount St. Helens |
| Description |
After over a decade of silence, Mount St. Helens has started to rumble. Following a week of threatening earthquakes, the volcano belched forth a plume of ash and steam on October 1, 2004. Hot rock pushed to the surface, vaporizing the mountain glaciers into steam. The earthquakes continued over the course of the following three days accompanied by another small steam eruption. On October 4, a second cloud of steam billowed from the mountain for about 40 minutes starting at 9:43 a.m., local time. Two hour later, the Ikonos satellite captured this detailed image of the volcano?s crater. A small cloud of steam and ash can be still be seen rising from the left edge of the circular crater in the center of the image. The surface of the volcano bears scars from past activity with silvery ribbons of lava radiating from the center. For updates and additional information about the eruption, please visit the Cascade Volcano Observatory [ http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/News/framework.html ] sponsored by the USGS. Image copyright Space Imaging [ http://www.spaceimaging.com/ ] |
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Mount St. Helens
| Title |
Mount St. Helens |
| Description |
After over a decade of silence, Mount St. Helens has started to rumble. Following a week of threatening earthquakes, the volcano belched forth a plume of ash and steam on October 1, 2004. Hot rock pushed to the surface, vaporizing the mountain glaciers into steam. The earthquakes continued over the course of the following three days accompanied by another small steam eruption. On October 4, a second cloud of steam billowed from the mountain for about 40 minutes starting at 9:43 a.m., local time. Two hour later, the Ikonos satellite captured this detailed image of the volcano?s crater. A small cloud of steam and ash can be still be seen rising from the left edge of the circular crater in the center of the image. The surface of the volcano bears scars from past activity with silvery ribbons of lava radiating from the center. For updates and additional information about the eruption, please visit the Cascade Volcano Observatory [ http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/News/framework.html ] sponsored by the USGS. Image copyright Space Imaging [ http://www.spaceimaging.com/ ] |
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Mount St. Helens
| Title |
Mount St. Helens |
| Description |
In the week and a half since Mount St. Helens rumbled back to life, it has quieted somewhat. The steady earthquakes have slowed as have the intermittent plumes of ash and steam. Though the alert level has been dropped to Alert Level 2, scientists are still wary of the volcano, warning that it could still erupt with little or no warning. Changes in activity levels, possibly for the next few months, are to be expected says the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Cascades Volcano Observatory [ http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/News/framework.html ]. Mount St. Helens? most recent eruption began on October 1, 2004, when it released a large cloud of ash and steam. Small plumes rose from the volcano in the succeeding few days, and it was in this period, on October 4, when the ALI sensor on NASA?s EO-1 satellite took this image. Here, the volcano?s crater is the dark shadow in the tan circular region on the left side of the image. White clouds of steam stream away from the crater across the image. The lake to the south of the crater is Swift Reservoir on the Lewis River. In the days since this image was taken, only light clouds of steam have risen from the crater where hot volcanic rock has turned the volcano?s glacier to steam. NASA image courtesy Lawrence Ong, EO-1 Mission Science Office [ http://eo1.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ], NASA GSFC |
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Ongoing Eruption of Mount Be
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| Title |
Ongoing Eruption of Mount Belinda |
| Description |
IKONOS captured this spectacular view of the ongoing eruption of the Mount Belinda volcano on Montagu Island, in the South Sandwich Islands of the Scotia Sea, some 250 kilometers from South Georgia Island. The South Sandwich Islands are situated approximately between the southern tip of South America and mainland Antarctica. Montagu Island is dominated by the long-dormant Mount Belinda stratovolcano, which rises 1370 meters above sea level. This volcano is totally ice-covered, and until late 2001, it was inactive, thereby accumulating a thick cover of ice and snow. However, as this image shows, the volcano began erupting in late 2001, spewing basaltic lavas that have melted the ice, producing a marvelous ?natural laboratory? for studying lava-ice interactions relevant to the biology of extreme environments as well as to processes believed to be important on the planet Mars. This image was acquired on October 1, 2004, and shows the steaming vent crater and dark, basaltic tephra covered ice surfaces to the north of the lavas which erupted down the northern flank of the Mt. Belinda stratovolcano. The steam plume is drifting toward the north, and light clouds surround the south side of the crater. White chunks of ice float in the ocean surrounding Montagu Island. The full resolution version of the image shown above has a resolution of 4 meters per pixel, but IKONOS also acquired the image at 1 meter per pixel (3.20 Mb). Thanks to the 1-meter imaging capabilities of the IKONOS satellite, dynamic processes such as those on remote, uninhabited islands, can be monitored from orbit, thereby serving to target more intensive field studies when they are justified. As such, IKONOS imaging of localities such as active eruptions involving ice-lava interactions, represents a new form of scientific exploration of planet Earth. Image copyright Space Imaging [ http://www.spaceimaging.com/ ], caption by Dr. Jim Garvin, NASA Chief Scientist for Mars and the Moon |
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